


ten times the winter soldier wanted to ask a question, but didn't.

by Annwyd



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: 10 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annwyd/pseuds/Annwyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retrospective of missed opportunities. Marvel Comics continuity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ten times the winter soldier wanted to ask a question, but didn't.

**1**  
He wants to ask, _Where am I?_ or, _Who are you?_ when they wake him up from death gasping, but he misplaced the sense and wisdom necessary for it somewhere. Maybe it's with that arm he seems to be missing.

He has something else instead: a deep hot sense of shame and failure that becomes bewildered rage as it bubbles up in him. He doesn't ask anything. He just lashes out.

**2**  
After three days out of stasis, it finally occurs to him that he should ask what his name is. _You are going to be our Winter Soldier,_ was what they told him, but that's not a name. Still, he tells himself he is busy training to better serve the state. Having a name would only distract him. He doesn't ask after one.

**3**  
The streets of East Berlin are desolate and chilly at four in the morning when the Winter Soldier finally returns to his handlers after his first mission. It's fine. He has no problem moving quietly and stealthily through a sleeping city. Besides, they give him hot coffee when he finally arrives at the meeting point and laugh over his head with each other as they prepare the messages to Moscow. He's warmed by the approval he hears in that laughter.

Still, he really wishes he could ask if he did well.

**4**  
It's been a year or more since he left stasis. The Winter Soldier is a busy man. He has missions. He trains recruits. He is a valuable, valuable asset. He is pleased with all of this; he should be pleased with all of this.

Sometimes, though--sometimes he catches sight of a uniform, or of the hammer and sickle on some official document, and it feels like the ground goes out from under him and his well-trained legs simply wish to buckle beneath him. At times like that, now and again he nearly asks, "What am I fighting for?"

But the problem is the words totally escape him when he tries to put it in Russian. They morph treacherously back into English on his tongue, for some strange reason. So he keeps it back in his throat somewhere and never voices the thought.

**5**  
They have met three times now, spent three hurried nights together in hotels that were quiet and unremarkable before the two of them replaced that out-of-the-way peace with frantic passion.

This time, when Natalia Romanova slips in the window and lands lightly on the bed next to the Winter Soldier, she is just a little more subdued than those previous times. It's just enough for him to touch her chin and say, "Natalia. What's wrong?"

Her perfect blue eyes are distant and heavy with worry. "It's something I heard."

"About us?"

She hesitates. "No. About you. A rumor, it was just some rumor."

_What did you hear? Natalia, do you know who I am?_

He swallows the question and kisses her instead.

**6**  
It's nearing three years since they took him out of stasis. Most nights now he has trouble sleeping. Something he can't put words to bothers him innately.

When he does sleep, he dreams his way through detached nightmares of a distortion that tears apart his very self. Sometimes he has his left arm back but the rest of his body is falling apart. Other times, he opens his mouth to speak and his breath comes out as a solid thing full of treacherous cracks. He is losing coherence in all the places that make him something valuable to his handlers. What is there underneath the cracking mask of the perfect soldier other than anger and fear?

During the day he carries out his missions with perhaps a few more jokes than he used to. Someone will notice this eventually, and there may be trouble. But he needs humor to get by now.

At night, he lies on his thin bed, stares up at the ceiling, and wonders what lies beneath their programming. He would not have called it _their programming_ before, only _my mission_. But it has been a long time since they reinforced the programming, and almost as long since anyone said, "Winter Soldier, you did well this time."

He voices his question to no one.

**7**  
"Why--!"

They think he's asking, with so much distress in his voice, why they're hurting Natalia where he can see it, and they laugh at him. He knows why they're doing _that_ \--it's part of his punishment, part of both of their punishments, this convoluted feedback loop of _We are so disappointed in both of you_ and _You betrayed the program_ and _You betrayed each other_ mixed and bound together with physical beatings.

He knows the answer to that, so why would he be asking about it? What he keeps trying to ask, but not getting out in full words, is this: why can't he belong to Natalia Romanova instead of the state? Why can't they belong to each other?

But this is the end of any of that. If they ever use him again, they will be far more careful.

**8**  
The old general's breath rasps in his lungs the night he remarks, "I will be dead in another morning or two. I have not seen America fall, but--" He laughs thinly. "I have you, my fine soldier."

The Winter Soldier opens his mouth to ask something inconsequential, but there's something so final about Vasily Karpov's words that his charge nearly voices his real question instead. "Are you--" _Are you proud of me?_ He stops himself at the last moment. It's not his place to make that kind of demand.

**9**  
He is well-trained. Don't they realize that? He can tell that the Russian his latest pair of handlers are speaking is peppered with code words. "Spring cleaning"? How stupid do they think he is?

The man who might as well have created him is dead. The Soviet Union is a tottering husk. No one is going to take him out of stasis again this time.

But the Winter Soldier feels almost weary after the past few years, and he has only one fleeting regret before they put him under: he never asked anyone what he was good for. He always kept that question to himself.

**10**  
How many times did he tell Lukin not to bother keeping this man alive? How many times did he ask permission to shoot him in the head before he could cause any more trouble?

Captain America, Steve Rogers, the man with the shield and the determined eyes--

The Winter Soldier finally has the chance to fight him all-out, here where he's discarding the cosmic cube. But what he really wants to do is ask, _Why do I care if you live or if you die?_

He doesn't ask a damn thing. He just throws the punch.


End file.
